Quantitative assessment of urbanization's effects on crop production in the U.S., suggesting improved land-use strategies.
Abstract In a context of economic growth and increasing urban populations, assessing the impact of urban-cropland interactions on crop production in developed countries offers insights about future global scenarios. We quantitatively assessed the impact of urbanization on crop production in the United States since 2000 by combining earth observation products and crop modelling. We found that urbanization has appropriated 2.1 M ha of highly productive cropland, leading to an overall decline in U.S. cropland area over time and a production loss of 15 million tons of maize, soybean, and wheat. Avoiding the negative impacts of urbanization on crop production and the environment will require proper land-use planning and urban design and yield intensification on existing cropland.
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Grassini et al. (2025) studied this question.
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